The Unremarkable Super Zero
by JessieDoll
Summary: After discovering an unusual truth about himself and digging up a long hidden secret about the Professor, Tracey decides on a life altering career change usually reserved for the heroic.
1. Sweet Child of Mine

The Unremarkable Super Zero

Chapter 1: Sweet Child of Mine

Companions aren't supposed to be heroes or tell their own compelling stories. We generally fade into the background and support the main character in their endeavours when they need a positive word or two, maybe give them a hand to help pick them up when they fall. I always assumed that was my destiny, seeing myself as the fairly unremarkable type who stays out of trouble and tries to keep quiet. Fate had something different in mind for me though, starting with the night I woke up in the dark.

That in itself wasn't unusual, I always slept with the lights off or under the stars. However, the smell in the room was strong like disinfectant and there was a small electronic buzz humming somewhere in the room. I tried to remember when I fell asleep, but as I lied there straining my eyes to make out the room I couldn't remember anything about going to bed. Actually, the last thing I was able to recall was walking along the path in daylight to the Cerulean gym to see Misty and Daisy.

The answer was obvious, I had been abducted by aliens.

At the time there was no other evidence to suggest otherwise, I felt around my shoulders for a second head or ears sprouting on my collar bone to support my theory but found nothing, not even a darn third eyeball. Aliens or not, I needed to figure out what was going on. My whole body felt immensely heavy but I managed to pull myself up into a sitting position and swing my legs over the edge. The floor was cold on my toes, I put weight on my feet gingerly. My legs felt weak and combined with the sensation of feeling super heavy that was not an ideal situation.

After landing flat on my face as the result of trying to take a few steps I decided that crawling was a much better option that wouldn't end up flattening my face, however average it was. Feeling around on the cold floor in the dark I managed to make my way to a door that was thankfully unlocked and pushed it opened.

A dim yellow light burst from the darkness and I edged myself in a hospital hallway. That explained the smell and possibly the buzzing sound as a piece of equipment, but I had to question what I was doing there. Also the hallway was oddly vacant of any human activity or sounds, it felt like I was the only one there. Another observation I made was a lack of any hospital evidence on my own body. No bandages or marks from needles and IV's, no hospital clothes or even a bracelet on my wrist.

Just me alone in a hallway on a cold floor in nothing but shorts and a t-shirt. Not even a pair of shoes or that damned headband I practically never took off, some bastard must have mugged me and made off with my stuff. That was the only logical explanation if aliens proved to be incorrect and this wasn't some elaborate illusion they were feeding into my brain while the rest of my lied open on an operating table for their cruel experiments. The more down to earth explanation was that someone had robbed me on the path to Cerulean and I ended up on the hospital. Yes. Totally plausible if not for the lack of injuries and medical staff.

What worried me more than my material possessions being gone were the whereabouts of my pokemon. My pockets were empty and that would definitely be the first place a mugger would look when rifling around for valuables. Still, fretting about it on the floor wasn't going to help. I had to get out of there and find them.

"Helloooo?" I called out, slightly startled at my own voice. It sounded…unnatural, deeper than what I was used to hearing echo in my skull. Thinking about it, that wasn't the only difference. My hair was longer, falling off my shoulders, and there was something different about my limbs. Exactly how long had I been down for the count? Before I was able to put much more thought into it a set of double doors at the end of the hall burst open and two frantic looking women in light blue scrubs were walking hurriedly towards me.

I greeted them both about as friendly as one could in my plight and attempted to talk to them but they were not interested in that kind of conversation I presented. They asked if I was alright and why I was out of bed before sticking me in a wheel chair and whisking me away back through the doors. I ended up in another room where a man in a lab coat started immediately flashing a light in my eyes and asking me the same questions as the ladies in the scrubs. How repetitive, that wasn't going to get me anywhere.

"Woah, woah! Slow down please." I growled yet tried to remain polite as I shoved the light away, the irritated glare he shot me didn't phase me. "Look, I just woke up in an unfamiliar place with all my stuff and pokemon gone and I have no idea how I got here. I should be asking YOU the questions before anyone starts poking around or sticking lights in my face! I'm still trying to figure out if this is a drug induced hallucination at the hands of aliens!"

Lab coat guy made the most curious face at the last part of my statement before shutting the pocket light off and taking a seat on a stool. The women in scrubs had left making us the only people in the bright room. "You're right, " he replied with a tired drawl. "Thing is, I don't know if you'll believe what I have to tell you."

"It's aliens, isn't it. Crap."

"Not exactly, but it's still pretty unusual. Well, if you don't work here..." Lab coat guy continued, I could tell he was baffled by my fixation on the alien theory.

Narrowing my eyes at him I tried to relax, mind you that was rather difficult considering I still had no idea what the heck was going on. "I dunno, I've seen some pretty remarkable things. Try me, I'm already seated." I was hoping he would have found humour in that last bit, he did not.

Lab coat got up and walked over to a table on the other side of the room, which had stark white walls and strange blue-print like diagrams decorating the space above a messy table overflowing with papers and small metal components. Lab coat came back over with a folder and tossed it on my lap, he made a gesture like he wanted me to open it.

Admittedly curious I looked the folder over before peeking inside, it was just a plain manilla folder with messy hand-writing on it I couldn't make out properly. Inside were some typed documents. The more I flipped through though, the more my eyes grew wide in shock and horror. These lists and statements were all pertaining to me (I mean my name was clearly printed on most of the pages in the top corner, otherwise I was referred to as 'the subject'), so I assumed the series of photographs and schematics that followed were also related. The brief paragraphs talked about repairs and upgrades, the photos were hard to made out but one looked like an open chest cavity. Not a normal one though, it was something inhuman I wasn't at all familiar with.

Everything contained in the folder looked more like it belonged in a sic-fi movie, and at first I tried to rationalize everything by telling myself it was a prank or a dream. However I knew deep down that it wasn't the case, there were too many questions and unusual circumstances from my childhood that could be answered by what the man in the lab coat had just presented to me. My hands shook as I closed the folder and just let it drop on my lap again, I knew what I had just read but wanted to keep believing I was still asleep. If the documents and photos were in fact real they were suggesting a very scary reality for me. "I don't…I don't feel so good all of a sudden."

"An emotional and physical response, at least something is working." Lab coat guy muttered.

"W-what? Hey, don't talk like that!" I was getting really upset with this guy and his attitude, here he was mocking me while I was trying to understand the weight of my situation. God, this revelation was going down about a smooth as swallowing a handful of nails mixed with broken glass. I knew what it all meant, but I didn't want to say it. Not out loud, not to myself. The longer the words remained silent on my lips the longer they would remain untrue.

The word, that horrible word.

Cyborg.

I sat there in silence for the next hour while the man in the white coat went about his work. He did things a typical doctor would do like check for a heartbeat and more unusual things like hook up a cord to the back of my head and run some kind of diagnostic while I sat there in shock. I could _feel _the machine going through my mind as it ran a systems check, I didn't like it one bit and started to cry. There was heaving and choking, but not a single tear.

Needless to say I did not have any friendly goodbyes with lab coat guy, I didn't even care that he introduced himself as Doctor Wolf. I didn't want him to have a name or acknowledge his existence, I wanted to pretend that this was all just some awful nightmare for as long as I could. Of course that all came to a crashing halt when I was fetched again by one of the ladies in scrubs, only this time I was feeling more able on my feet and insisted that I be allowed to walk however slow and dependant on the walls I was. She walked alongside me slowly and wordlessly, taking me to yet another unfamiliar room. This one was more homey with couches and a little less of the hospital smell but the walls still screamed institution. I didn't ask why I was taken there, didn't even say goodbye when the lady left but I could feel her eyes looking at me with pity.

I wanted to know why I didn't have any tears, why I never noticed a port in the back of my head. I wanted to know why no one had told me the truth, that I was some creation created in a laboratory. How much of me was human and how much of me was machine? Maybe I was all machine, but I was so scared and frustrated I couldn't recall all the minute details I had read in the document in the short time it was in my possession.

That's when the door opened and a woman with a familiar face strode in. She smiled warmly and bent down to scoop me into a hug, I didn't hug her back. As she broke away from me I noticed she appeared less put together than usual. Her mossy green hair was swept up in a messy bun, her face lacked the usual candy apple red lips and smoky eyes, the dress she wore was wrinkled and her nails were unpainted and chewed up. Obviously she was also experiencing some form of distress, she normally took much better care of herself and would never even leave the house if a hair was out of place.

She sat down on one of the couches anxiously fiddling with the hem of her dress, her eyes darted between myself and the floor. I couldn't make myself angry at her, I didn't even know her role in all of this. She was my mother after all. Joplin Sketchit, not capable of having an evil bone in her body.

"…mom? Are you okay?" I noticed that her eyes were red, probably from crying.

She sniffled and grabbed a tissue from the coffee table, dabbing the corners of her eyes with it. "We have a lot to talk about, sweetheart."

I won't bore you with the details of our emotional exchange but mom did have a lot to tell me (talk about an understatement), all starting back when I was born. According to her I had not only been born premature but my chances of living what one might classify as a 'normal' life were drastically reduced. The doctors basically determined that while my mind may have been perfectly average, my body would make me a prisoner. Blind, deaf and in a condition that would leave me unable to walk if I ever grew…my parents were devastated at the news. Not because they had a child with severe disabilities but because they did not know if they could be good parents to such a child.

My siblings had all been born perfectly healthy, why I was different was a mystery. My mother never drank or took drugs while she was pregnant with me and didn't experience any illnesses, the cause of my condition was unknown. While my family was trying to figure out how to best deal with the situation word of what was going on had caught the attention of some people on the mainland by word of some of the hospital staff who should have kept their mouths shut. Representatives from a place called The Facility promptly took transport to the island to meet with my parents and discuss a unique proposition with them.

The idea the strangers from the mainland proposed was call the Cyborg Project. In exchange for collecting data and being allowed to integrate machinery into me The Facility would build a brand new body for me to exist in, putting whatever functioning human parts they could salvage on the inside. My parents needed some time to think about it, but after my condition did not appear to be improving they contacted the Facility again and agreed to offer me up as their little experiment. They didn't view it as such though, they saw it a a chance to give me the fullest life possible. And that's all any parent ever wants for their child, wether it means life saving surgery or giving them up to a crew of secretive scientists with questionable morals.

So the procedures began, by the end of it all a person on the outside would never be able to tell the difference (I knew, I'd seen the pictures). According to my mother my outer shell felt and looked so much like a real infant it was hard to believe that the skin was purely synthetic and the bright eyes were robotic. Things were not perfect however, thinking back on it now I don't know why growing up I never questioned anything out of the ordinary.

I had to speak with my hands and walk with leg braces until I was 8 until an upgrade finally enabled me to speak with a simulated voice and gave better mobility to my legs. Skinning my knees never brought blood, the clicks I heard in my head as I tried to sleep at night were not something natural that everyone heard. Mom explained that I never knew about the upgrades was because of implanted memories, the facility would program false memories into my brain augmentation to fill in the month long gaps when I was getting refitted into new bodies as my remaining organs grew.

This had been going on for years and I never suspected a thing, I was so trusting I never questioned why my sweat never smelled or why I didn't visibly grow like everyone else around me. My outer shell was all an elaborate illusion, I was basically a brain controlling a human sized robot. I had no idea what I really looked like, but mom explained that they based a lot of my appearance and my voice on my uncle Perry, specifically photos and videos of his younger self. What my face would have looked like had I not been so heavily altered was a complete mystery.

After hearing her tale and watching her cry there was no way I could be upset with my mother, her intentions were nobel however they may have turned out. Besides, I was kind of stuck in this reality. No pinching myself to wake up or stepping out of my fake body, I had to live with it. That was another thing though, how long could I go on like this? Without a real body and very few real organs who knew how long I could go on living, the potential was limitless. The day could come eventually come where my mind was just a program in an artificial brain, living on long after my organic parts had died off. I could live forever and that scared me more than the thought of death, I didn't want to live alone.

Of course I asked where my pokemon had gone too, and the rest of my stuff for that matter. At the time I didn't even have a pair of shoes to speak of. She told me that right after my initial arrival at The Facility she went to the closest comm unit and called up the Professor. I was horrified to hear this, he knew. He knew I wasn't completely human. Turns out mom had my little monsters sent back to the lab to be taken care of while I was what The Facility dubbed 'non-operational'. They were safe and being taken care of, that's all that mattered. If I had somehow not made it through the upgrade they were in a good place. And while I knew she was trying to make things easy for myself and everyone else I didn't like the idea of the professor knowing about my status as a cyborg. Oak was a scientist, scientists use machines as tools and I was mostly machine. How could he look at me without seeing me as an object instead of his willing assistant? No, I was still the same person, I had been a cyborg pretty much my whole life without knowing it. There was really no reason to think different of me.

One existential crisis, a tweaking session and chick flick movie marathon later, I had the ability to cry again and was allowed to freely leave The Facility. It had taken me a day or so to get used to the size of my new body which was much taller than my previous one, so were other aspects of my appearance. My face was far more adult, gone were the googly eyes and blocky face. My nose was straighter and didn't upturn anymore, my cheekbones were more prominent and I swear they gave me more freckles and widened the gap in my front teeth. I may have been mostly machine, but having flaws was one of those details that made me seem more human on the outside.

Before mom and I left The Facility I was allowed to look around the building, considering I was their 'product' they didn't mind that much as long as I stayed out of the way of delicate procedures. Turns out The Facility was just a code name for a building owned by a much larger technology company that has started dabbling in robotics 30 years back. I learned that what I was part of was a much larger project involving about 6 other candidates, the first one being a volunteer from the facility himself. He was pointed out to me on our little walkabout but seeing as he was behind a glass wall in a mask at the time I didn't feel like bothering him. The woman guiding my mother and I around explained that he also wasn't as heavily altered as I was, just an arm and some brain augmentation. It was nice to know I wasn't totally unique though, not that being unique is a bad thing. It was just nice knowing I wasn't completely alone in my shell.

There is one thing I have never told anyone else though. I went wandering the night before I left, I wanted to look around without feeling like a tourist and let it all sink in. The sounds, the smells, the way the white in the sterile room was so bright it almost seemed to glow blue. I found a room that was unlocked, obviously that meant it was okay to enter. So I did. Flicking the light on was probably one of the worst mistakes I'd ever made, I thought I'd walked into a morgue. Lifeless bodies were sprawled everywhere, thrown to the ground like they were trash. There were small children and adults crammed on shelves with eyes missing and limbs barely hanging.

A set of eyes were starring straight at me from the floor and made me jump because they were my own, the ones I'd had for the last few years at least. I guess when my most recent upgrade had been performed mostly new parts were used because crumpled on the floor partially wrapped in a tarp was my old body with a giant tear in the face. Why they discarded the bodies the way they did and why my other body was so damaged were a mystery but I was too horrified to investigate with all the other bodies lying around. I knew they were not real people, but they had once housed them just like my own. I left with those images burned into my brain and returned to my room as soon as possible, needless to say I didn't sleep much that night.

When we left the next morning I asked mom if she could fill me in on some missing gaps in my memory, but she told me Misty and Daisy would be the best ones to do that. I assumed this meant I had actually made it to the gym that day, but what happened between the pathway and waking up was drawing a blank in my mind. Before my mother left we had to go and get my trainer registration picture retaken and my identification updated, it had been so long since I first received the ID my face no longer seemed related to the one in the original. What really didn't sit well with me was the status update, now clearly labeled on my identification along with my place of origin was the word 'cyborg'. Mom explained it was for my own safety, just in case something happened again in the future and I needed help but couldn't speak for myself. Sure, it made sense but I didn't feel comfortable with it being public knowledge. The whole thing made me feel like I might as well have been walking around with a neon sign that glared "CYBORG FREAK!"

Still, I didn't have much of a choice. I was a traveller and like anyone else with a special condition laws stated that it must be included in the identification no matter how strange it was.

With everything taken care of Mom finally had to go, she'd been away from home and work for too long and needed to return. Dad was probably a mess trying to take care of my little sister and the house, Mom needed to swoop in and save them. She was great at that, walking in and fixing everything. Saying my goodbyes to mom from the platform at the station she was on her way to the coastline where she would catch a boat and return to save the family from calamity and no doubt assure them I was still intact.

I caught my own ride 15 minutes later and started the trip back to Cerulean, there were some burning questions I needed answered.


	2. You and I

The Unremarkable Super Zero

Chapter 2: You and I

It was nice to see that everything seemed unchanged outside the gym when I arrived, indoors was a different story though. The old coffee table was gone and part of the wall was poorly patched up and needed repainting as well as a few other questionable dents in the dry wall. Something had definitely gone down.

I found Misty up on a ladder in the dimly lit aquarium area, must have been feeding time. When she noticed me standing there she nearly fell off the ladder in shock but thankfully only dropped the bucket she was holding, it hit the ground with a loud CLANG. Misty hopped off the ladder and scooped her bucket and asked if I was there to challenge her, apparently not recognizing me. To be fair I probably wouldn't have either, this manufactured face wasn't exactly a gracefully aged progression from my previous one. I didn't look like a dopey little teenager anymore, I looked like a full grown adult.

"Hey…wait a minute." Misty stepped closer squinting, staring particularly hard into my eyes. "No way, I don't believe it. Is it really you, Tracey?"

"I sure hope so."

"Oh we are going to have to keep Daisy away from you."

"Hmm? What?"

"Never mind! But we really need to catch up, it's been a long month!"

Before I could protest or ask any questions Misty was dragging me to main office, she forced me to sit in the kooshy desk chair and took a spot on the desk with her legs crossed. She leaned over resting her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee. A look of curiosity lit up in her eyes, I could tell she was giving me a good once-over.

She bowed down dangerously close to my face, squinting at something hard. "Would you look at that, they even gave you little freckles. Not a detail overlooked!"

I gulped and laughed anxiously. "Yeah, totally! They even kept that dopey gap in my teeth!" I beared my top chompers at her, Misty bubbled with laughter and shook her head.

"They can change your body but they can't change you…" The laughter stopped and she caught her breath, her face relaxed and she blinked curiously at me. "That being said, how are you handling things?"

How could I answer that honestly? There was so much to talk about, yet I didn't know where to begin, and there was so much more I needed to ask. Most importantly, what happened the day I blacked out? "Uh…alright I guess, you know for a brain pilot in a robot suit."

She seemed puzzled by my little joke, at that point I don't think she was quite aware of the full extent of my enhancements. How I was basically gooey human parts inside a solid cyborg shell, kind of like those weird chocolate eggs everyone seemed to sell around easter. I shifted the topic somewhat and asked where everyone else was, she started rattling on about how her older sisters were continually neglectful of their duties at the gym and vented her frustrations about their irresponsible behaviours. You couldn't help but feel bad for her, she basically ran the gym all by herself.

"Hey, wait a minute. Let's not get too off track here, as your friend I demand to know how you're really doing." Misty shoved my knee with her foot and narrowed her eyes at me.

I sighed, my head was starting to ache a little. I wondered how much of that was programming or not. "Misty, the last day I was here. I don't remember arriving at all, the last thing I can recall is being on the path and the next thing I know I'm waking up in some strange room."

"And you want me to fill in the gaps?"

"Mom said you might be able to."

"I should be, definitely not a day I'll forget for a long time."

Misty opened her mouth to start but the door to the office flew open and in a swirl of blonde hair with the scent of roses was Daisy staring rather intently at her cell phone, barely paying attention to us. As she walked in and dropped her handbag on the desk she almost bumped into the chair I was situated in, but without so much as a blink she kept on walking until she was right beside Misty.

"Okay, so when are you going to move that stuff in the front? I almost tripped over it again!"

Misty glowered at her older sister. "I don't see why you're so incapable of moving it yourself if you want it gone so bad."

Finally peeling her eyes away from her phone, Daisy held up her hand with the back of it facing Misty and huffed. "Hello? Manicure! Just got one and I am not-!" Stopping mid sentence Daisy snapped her head in my direction and squinted, she went to speak but stopped herself. I could practically feel her eyes jumping all over me as she leaned in closer, all I could do was sit there awkwardly with a feeble grin. "Oh my-NO WAY. Tracey? When did you get hot?"

"Okay, DOWN GIRL." Misty yanked Daisy away from me by the back of her blouse before she got too close for comfort, and second longer and those eyelashes may have been close enough to brush my cheeks. And despite Misty's efforts Daisy couldn't seem to help but stare, and who wouldn't? A month ago she knew me as a short, stumpy teenager and now I was…well, the complete opposite. Even with the facial imperfections they kept I would still be deemed a "grade A hottie." I wasn't very keen on that and the potential attention it might bring.

"What? I just want to look, maybe see how real his new skin feels." Daisy wiggled some fingers and fluttered her eyelashes in my general direction, I wanted to die right on the spot.

"Totally inappropriate, Daisy."

"Oh you're no fun at all."

Misty threw her hands up and returned to her perch on the desk, Daisy grabbed a stool from the corner and joined us. I tired my best to ignore her wandering eyes, but despite being visibly uncomfortable with all this new attention she was laying on me Daisy didn't back down. Misty kicked her sister in the knee, not enough to hurt her just a bump to get her attention. They both shot nasty glares at each other.

"As I was saying before Miss Daisy came in a interrupted it's definitely not a day I'll forget for a long time." Misty said with her voice drenched in annoyance, she flipped another fierce glare at her sister before continuing. "You said you don't remember arriving at the gym?"

"Yeah, last thing I recall is walking on the path and-"

Daisy shot up from her stool, knocking it over with a loud clatter. "Wait! Are you telling the story about the day Tracey went super scary robot on us? I want to tell it!"

"Daisy I don't think it ma-"

"Please, please let me tell it? I've totally been going over it in my head for weeks now and I could clearly tell it better than you."

At her wits end, Misty was defeated and hopped off the desk. "You know what, I give up. I'm gonna go get some fresh air."

So much for protecting me from the gazes of Daisy that were clearly undressing me.

With her little sister gone Daisy claimed the spot on the desk and gleefully did a small clap. "Fantastic! Misty isn't really that great at telling stories you know."

"Oh? Really?" I just wanted her to get on with it, enough of this running around.

Daisy nodded and twirled some hair in her fingers, biting her lower lip in deep thought. "Let's see…Like, it was so scary, Tracey! You have no idea!"

"I honestly don't." Nope. Not a clue.

"Well, like you came here like you always do to help me with my chores because you're so awesome and nice. And like there you were on the ladder helping me install a new security camera, I was supervising of course, when this horrible guy burst in the front doors! I mean, he smelled awful like he slept in a drawer of icky gym socks. Don't even get me started on how fried his hair look. Anyhow, he came in and started yelling at poor Misty-"

A head of red hair bobbed into the room momentarily. "Before Daisy gets too ahead of herself the same guy was at the gym the day before. That's why Daisy had you in putting up a new camera, he'd had a tantrum after losing to me and trashed the foyer. The camera was the first thing to go."

Daisy crossed her arms and growled. "Thank you Misty, but as I was saying! So yeah, the guy was yelling at Misty and was super pissed off over losing the match and saying she cheated him, he started demanding a badge. As if Misty would just give one to a sore loser! Anyhow, he started going towards her and it looked bad so you got down from the ladder and put yourself between them and told him to leave. You looked super brave but you sounded super scared, it was so cute!"

I slid lower into the chair, covered my eyes with a hand in embarrassment. "Oh god…"

"So the smelly, angry dude pushed you aside but I guess you were feeling gutsy because you totally confronted him again. Well, this guy was waaaay bigger than you and picked you up like a rag doll and threw you on one of those coffee tables we have in there. Misty and I were totally freaking out and ran into the aquarium area to try and get away but we ended up coming back when we heard a scream that totally sounded like the angry guy. We came back and it was totally freaky Tracey! You were like standing over the guy and your eyes were all blacked out and your face was ripped open and sparking like fireworks, and when the guy got up again you shot him!"

Startled I straightened up in the chair gripping the arms, if I had a regular blood system knuckles would have been going white. "I did what?!"

"Well, not like with a gun. I guess you have some kind of a cannon thing in your arm." Daisy held her arm out and flexed her hand, holding it out flat. "Kind of like this, the light came out of your palm."

"…well, that's a detail they failed to inform me of at the Facility!" I wondered what other details were being kept from me, they had seemed fairly open about answering all my questions but were not very inclined to just give me information. Would have been nice to know though, that I was apparently a walking weapon.

Daisy must have sensed my slight panic, she slipped off the desk and took me by the shoulders. Admittedly I shrunk back in her gentle grip a little, fearing another attempt on her part to get too close to me. "Don't worry, you didn't kill him. It just kinda stunned him." When she felt my shoulders relax slightly Daisy let go and returned to the desk, jumping back on and crossing her legs. "Moving on then, I got totally scared and wanting to defend my little sister from the raging robot I grabbed a hammer from the tool box and slammed it across your head!" With that statement she mimicked picking something up and swinging it with force, her face scrunched into some grotesque cross between fear and anger.

"Uh…"

"Brutal, I know!" Daisy returned to her usual sweet self and yammered on. "...but we didn't know how dangerous you were. So like, robot you started to move towards me all twitchy but then you just fell. You know, like totally dead. I so thought I killed you. We had to lock the doors and stash you in the closet while we called the cops, we just told them the angry guy was drunk and they took him away for us."

"I am far too sober for this story." I muttered, in that moment a 40 of vodka would have been an appropriate companion.

"Let me finish! Thank you. So after the police left we had to do something with you. We broke into your backpack and found your cell phone, we thought we were calling your creator but it ended up being your mom which I guess she kinda is your creator but that's not important right now. She just told us to keep the gym locked up until a white truck came to fetch you. We were taken with them though and no one told us what the heck was going on for hours, poor Lily and Violet were totally worried when we didn't get back. But like eventually a woman showed up, she was totally pretty and kinda looked like you Tracey! Obviously it was your mom, she ended up crying and telling us everything about you being a cyborg and how she felt super guilty for not telling you about it."

My mothers guilt was the one thing I could completely accept, she'd displayed it rather clearly in the last few days her and I spent together. If I thought back far enough in my life I could actually find moments where that guilt and sadness was seeping out, little things like the expression on her face when I couldn't join the other kids for school trips or lying to me when I asked what the clicking sound in my head was when I tried to sleep at night. How she had kept it in for so long without cracking was a mystery, it probably hurt to keep it locked inside. Still, that didn't solve the biggest question of all. "…I don't understand something, why don't I remember any of this? I mean, Daisy I took down a guy, I shot him with some stupid arm cannon no one cared to tell me about. How the heck does someone just forget all of that?"

Daisy sat there in silence for a moment going back in her thoughts, she became much calmer and more reserved in her body language. I think part of her was starting to understand that this was important to me. "Well, your mom said that there's some kind of program in that brain thing of yours, I think it was called an augmentation? I guess every time you're in enough danger and you get hurt it's supposed to take over and save you. She said it happened another time when you were 12 but she didn't really talk about it."

No doubt another manipulated memory, something meant to be forgotten. I'd have to call mother and ask her about it another time.

Now that the story was told, I felt emptier than before and had a whole new block of questions I needed answers to. Still, I had a feeling that no matter how many questions I asked or how many answers I sought there would always be something that would always feel incomplete. I hated to admit it, but some of that feeling was betrayal. I wished my parents had just told me the truth long ago, this dance around the truth my entire life was something no one could keep up with forever.

The idea of it alone was too exhausting. The effort put into keeping me human, the fact that for years a group of scientists and technicians had been working to create the perfect illusion of humanity. It seemed stupid, like a waste of time. Why me? Why bother. I wasn't special, I wasn't worth saving.

Without a word I stood up and left the office. Make no mistake though I wasn't upset with Daisy and I didn't leave the gym since I wasn't exactly ready to head back to Pallet, I still feared that the professor would be judgemental. I actually had no idea what to do with myself at that point, there was too much information to digest and I was feeling another existential crisis creeping up on me, did any of the other Facility brand cyborgs go through the same ups and downs?

I wasn't standing in the aquarium for too long knocking my forehead repeatedly against the glass with a Luvdisc starring concerned at me when Daisy came strolling in, she stopped about 10 feet away and put her hands on her hips and tossed me an irritated glare. "Alright, no feeling sorry for yourself."

"Easy to say when you're not a walking science experiment."

Daisy stomped over angrily and shoved a finger in my chest forcing me to stop banging my head. She was right up on her tip toes trying to get in my face to make her point.

"You know that none of this changes who you are, you're still Tracey. Cyborg or not."

"I know."

"Right. Well start convincing yourself, don't go around sulking and getting your face smears all over my aquarium."

"I don't have have face smears, my skin isn't real. And gee Daisy, isn't that a little insensitive? I mean, I just found out about all this a few days ago and you expect me to just get over it like that? And another thing, you just let it slip that I'm basically walking around with a concealed weapon in my arm, what if I hurt someone or kill them? Do I just get over that as well?" Okay, now I was pretty upset and despite me uncharacteristically raising my voice in anger she didn't once lower herself and just stood there starring at me defiantly.

Daisy grabbed the front of my shirt aggressively and yanked my face down to her level. "I'm not asking you to get over it, I'm telling you that this doesn't change anything about who you are!"

"But I'm not normal!"

Daisy let go of me and threw her hands up in frustration. "Newsflash, you never were! I don't know if you've ever noticed but like, you are totally not normal at all and it has nothing to do with you being a cyborg. Like, what teenage boy seriously wants to sit around a look at monsters all day?"

"Hey, they're cool..."

Daisy stomped her feet like a small child and blew up again, her hair flying every direction as her head thrashed about."Don't interrupt me when I'm scolding you! Ugh, Tracey whatever-your-middle-name-is Sketchit, I swear-!"

"Lee." I squeaked out, she somehow heard me and stopped dead mid-fit.

A single blue eye blinked from behind a thick curtain of blonde hair. "Pardon?"

"My middle name, it's Lee." I replied sheepishly, I know I know. My parents totally gave me the most masculine names on the planet.

"And do soulless robots have middle names?"

"I really can't say for sure."

Flipping her hair back and brushing her fingers quickly through it Daisy took a few calming breaths and walked back over to me, her eyes still leering. "Well then Tracey LEE Sketchit, you're welcome to stay here as long as your life crisis about your place in the universe is bothering your pretty little face but if I catch you questioning your content of character again I totally have no reservations about strapping you to the hood of my car and taking you for a joyride."

"Y-you wouldn't."

"Oh? I wouldn't? Would you fight back if I came down here with bungee cords and a roll of duct tape?"

"Is that a fact or a proposition?" The second I realized what had popped out of my mouth I suddenly lost the ability to form proper sentences, went white as a sheet and high tailed it out of the gym, I really hadn't meant to say anything of that nature but sometimes you get too caught up in the moment when you get a back and fourth banter going with someone. If anything that was a confirmation of my humanity, robots don't fall into innuendo ladened traps and regret it.

Needless to say, I didn't crawl back to the gym until long after sunset.


	3. Born too Slow

The Unremarkable Super Zero

Chapter 3: Born Too Slow

Two weeks passed before I worked up enough courage to return to Pallet Town, but even then my bravery quickly left me as I stepped out of the Cerulean gym and tried to shrink back inside. None of the sisters were having that though, the lot of them shoved me back out the door right away and locked it so I had no choice but to leave. So much for being allowed to stay for as long as I needed! I couldn't blame them though, they were only looking out for me and it really was time for me to return to the lab. At that point I'd been away for almost 2 months and if the professor could still look at me like a human being we had a lot to discuss.

By foot and hitching rides I made it back in good time only to find myself standing at the bottom of the hill starring up at the lab with what felt like an ocean churning in my stomach. There I was reverting quickly back to a younger version of myself, shaking all over in fear and doubt. I had made it that far though, all I needed to do was open the door and act like nothing was different.

And that's exactly what I tried to do. Taking a deep breath I scaled the hill quickly, breezed through the front door like I owned the place and went upstairs to drop my bag off like I had just comeback from a day trip or an errand. Back downstairs I walked right past the professor and out the back doors to search for my little monsters I had missed so much. The purple fuzz ball and bubbly blue rodent were more than happy to see me back again and rubbed against my shins like they hadn't seen me in years, I was actually surprised they recognized me at all.

I was about to go in search of Scyther when there was a tap on my shoulder, I jumped and spun my head around to see the professor standing there looking rather confused. I tried to act natural, like nothing was different but in my attempt to turn around to face him my feet stumbled over Venonat and Marill and I fell flat on my rear. Graceful as a Swanna queen.

"Are you alright?" The professor asked offering a hand, I took it wordlessly and nodded. He crossed his arms and quirked an eyebrow as I knocked the grass off my clothes and made sure my little beasts hadn't been squished by my fall. "Are you certain about that? You seem jumpy."

"What? Me? No, not at all! Well maybe a little but all things considered I think I'm doing pretty good!" I laughed nervously and forced a smile, the professor was clearly not convinced. Exhaling loudly I slumped my shoulders in defeat and confessed. "I've been too scared to come back here because I thought you might treat me differently knowing that I'm a cyborg."

The professor appeared dumbfounded by that admission, shaking his head in disbelief he chuckled and put an encouraging hand on my shoulder. "No, never Tracey. I expect you want to get back to work though?"

"Y-yes! Right away!" I may have been overly enthusiastic to reply, because while I initially thought I was ready to get back into a routine I was completely unprepared, apparently still burdened by an inner turmoil.

Those first few difficult days that went by I tried really hard to get back to normal but things were not going as smoothly as I originally planned. Feeding schedules were being mixed up, documents were going missing and then turning up in unusual places like under the couch or in the oven of all places. I felt like I was making things worse by being back and eventually tried to restrict myself to cleaning, letting a few of the neighbourhood kids take care of the more simple lab duties until I had my head on straight again.

Disappointed with how quickly I had blazed through tidying the lab and main portion of the house the next logical step seemed like venturing to the storage shed at the far end of the property. Oak warned me it hadn't been touched in over a decade but I really needed a challenge to keep my mind off of everything swimming through my head. So armed with a dust mask and gloves I trampled through the thick grass and overgrown weeds surrounding the shed shoved just on the border between the main property and the woods.

My first futile attempt at opening the rusty lock failed when the key broke off but I found that I was able to break it off easily with one hand. Opening the large sliding door was considerably more difficult, since I was only able to open it about a foot before it jammed on something I couldn't see. Could have tried to open it more, but I didn't want to risk breaking the door or whatever was in the way. So figuring it was good enough, I climbed into the dark shed cobwebs and all. Finding a switch on the wall next to me I was surprised that the light still work. it flickered every few seconds but it was enough to see what a disaster zone the storage shed had become.

Stacked boxes littered the floor, some had toppled over and had clear signs that something had nibbled through it and made a home inside at some point. Old skis, broken kitchen chairs, empty oil cans and cracked mirror. Everything had a thick layer of dust over it. Sitting in the middle of the floor was a large vehicle only half covered by a tarp. The more I looked around the more I realized this was going to take longer than originally anticipated.

Probably for the best. The longer I could occupy myself with normal human things the better.

First order of business was getting the main door open, luckily that was easy to solve. There turned out to just be an old television blocking the way. Once the door was wide open and the fresh air rushed in with sunlight, the next logical step seemed to be getting the old beat up car out of the way. Of course there was no key anywhere to be found, I would have to move it under my own power.

Taking the parking brake off, I got behind the car and started to push. Logic being if I could break a lock like nothing, surely I could push a car. Shoving the old hunk of metal was easier than it should have been, if I'd been a normal human sweat probably would have been clinging to my clothes. That was the reminder I wasn't quite human though, a normal thing like sweat was never something I had to worry about at least in terms of smell. It usually took lots of running or a fever for my altered body to emulate something like sweat. It served no actual purpose, it was purely for appearances to give the illusion of normalcy.

"Woah! How did you do that?"

I heard small voices and looked up from the back bumper to see two of the new lab kids standing there holding empty buckets. They were a girl and a boy, neither of them probably no older than 9 and both of them pretty scruffy looking with bandaids on their skinned knees and leaves in their hair. Feeding time must have just ended, I'd kind of forgotten that and assumed no one would be around. Whoops.

"Uh…well…" Didn't know how to answer this one without divulging some very personal information.

The little girl turned to the boy and punched him in the arm. "You know how mom tells us to eat our vegetables so we can be big and strong? He probably ate all of his."

"Yes! Yes, that is exactly it." Oh good, one of the kids covered for me. BLESS THIS CHILD. "Uh, you'd better get back up to the lab and give the professor a status report."

The kids seemed content with this answer and the logic that their mothers advice was correct. Wouldn't they be surprised when they grew up?

Back to business!

Venturing back into the garage I gathered up the tarp that had been thrown on the ground. As I was rolling that one up my eyes spotted another one nearby. Curious, I lifted the edge and saw the front wheel of a motorcycle. I had admittedly always been somewhat fascinated by them, cousin Cal had driven them all his life and even taken me for rides on them. A few times I'd even taken a spin up the coastline on my own but that was something my parents were never allowed to find out, my mother would have me grounded for life and send my father off to beat up my cousin if they ever knew the truth.

Ripping off the tarp in a cloud of dust I waved the particles away and laid eyes on a chrome and black beauty of a vehicle. It had to be at least 30 years if not older but was in great shape except for a few scratches in the paint. Along the side of the gas tank was a white insignia that was somewhat familiar but I couldn't quite pin point where I had seen it before. Possibly the logo of the company that produced the bike?

That's what I thought at least until I came across a steel lock box which was curiously opened. As I thumbed through the papers to make sure I wasn't getting rid of anything important I started to realize that this was no ordinary collection of papers. Newspaper clippings, hand written notes and photographs. The insignia from the bike appeared in some of the photos on a black uniform worn by a masked man, the clippings spoke of crimes being thwarted and the notes seemed to be personal diary pages.

The more I read and looked the more my interested were perked. The pieces started falling into place for me once I came across a name: "Starstruck".

I'd seen it many times back home before on a shelf in the living room. Dad had a collection of comics and figures from his childhood he refused to let go of and tried to share with his children. I had never quite gotten into the collecting but occasionally enjoyed cracking opened and old issue.

But those things were meant to remain works of fiction, were they not? Perhaps Oak had just been another enthusiast like my father…but the clippings looked all too real and not like a collectors item. They were yellowed and fragile, cut out roughly or ripped from larger pages. If they had been meant to pass the test of time they would have been printed on thicker paper, cut neatly. These were from a real newspaper, so every title I came across was real. Every crime I read about was real.

Thus leading me to the conclusion that Starstruck was real, at least at some point.

Taking a closer look at some of the photos I squinted hard in the dim light at one of a young man sitting on a motorbike. Something was very familiar, but I needed a comparison to prove it. So jamming a few of the photos in my pack pocket and knocking the dust off my clothes I bounded out of the storage shed and made my way back to the lab. Luckily Oak was preoccupied with talking to someone on the phone when I slinked past. Making a beeline for the living room I found what I was looking for on a shelf just above the television.

Cracking opened the photo album on the coffee table I flipped through until I found some much younger pictures of the Professor. In some of them he was alone but most showed him with a woman around his age, smiling while standing around various places. It looked like he had traveled to quite a few places back then and I assumed that the woman was a girlfriend or his wife.

I picked out a few for comparison, they had similar lighting and colour to the pictures brought along in my pocket. Sticking them side by side confirmed it, there was no question. Oak was indeed the young man in the pictures from the garage. So, if the news clippings were real and the vehicle of a former vigilante was sitting in the garage the only logical thing to assume was that Oak himself used to be the masked vigilante Starstruck.

For the time being I took the photos from the garage and the few taken from the album and stashed them in my room under the mattress. I really needed some time to think about how I was going to ask the professor about this, because how do you ask a man if he was the 3 inch figure sitting on your fathers shelf as a kid? Well, Starstruck was apparently more than an action figure or an idea. He was flesh and blood, living and breathing. I decided that it would be best to spend the rest of the day as far away from the Professor as possible until I could come up with the words to ask him properly.

As I lie there in bed that night though my mind couldn't help but wander. Oak was a normal man who put on a mask and under another name went out to fight injustice, why did he do it? What made him stop? Age most likely, that and most major cities had strict laws against vigilante justice so that was probably a contributing factor to stopping the actions of a man riding around a city fighting crime in black spandex. Still, he was normal. No enhancements, no metal replacing flesh and bone and he still managed to go on for years through injury and the threat of arrest to fight for those who couldn't defend themselves.

And in that moment I had absolute clarity: What was stopping me from doing the same thing? For the first time in weeks I had a clear train of thought. The idea made sense, it was perfect. Maybe I wasn't the bravest soul on the planet but surely this was the universe telling me what I was meant to do, the whole reason I was born incomplete and turned into some biological and mechanical freak was so I would eventually come to this conclusion.

I didn't care how late it was or how much work I had to do in the morning, I scrambled out of bed anyways and headed for the door but stopped myself. What the hell was I doing? I didn't have a plan, I had nothing! I was getting ahead of myself. For once this wasn't doubt stopping me, I really didn't have a clue what I was doing and there was no way in hell going outside in my pj bottoms was a good idea. I lieu of a plan I fell asleep trying to convince myself it was a bad idea.

By the time morning rolled around I still hadn't stumbled across any reason why I shouldn't take the plunge, before anyone else was awake I was out the back door and out across the yard to the shed again. The professor didn't use it anymore, I was going to make it my own. With a few more hours of solid cleaning, light bulb replacements and covered windows I at least then had somewhere to pace and think out loud without anyone catching on and that's exactly what I did.

"WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? AUGGGHHH!"

My only exposure to vigilantes and super heroes came from my dad's comic books, full of big buff guys in tights with super human powers and buckets of confidence. I confronted the cracked mirror I'd salvaged and took an inventory of myself: Average physique, slouch of a man with zero determination and no disguise. I was the furthest thing from a hero that anyone could be, a bumbling lab assistant that couldn't even do his job right anymore.

That's when I remembered those kids from the day before, they'd seen me push a car like it was nothing. No hills or gravity, no help. What else was I capable of?

When given the challenge I found I was able to accomplish some pretty incredible things. Strength was no problem, I was able to lift the back of the old car with one hand and nearly balance it on the front bumper had it not been for the roof of the shed. Likewise my strength made metal like clay in my hands, I was able to form it in unusual shapes and bend it back to its original form. The thick woods behind the shed became a playground, going from the forest floor to treetops in less than 10 seconds and leaping down to land on my feet (most of the time).

I was fast and strong, it amazed me how much different I was just with the knowledge of being different. Before I knew the truth I never would have been able to do any of this, something I could have used back when travelling with Ash and Misty in the islands. Certain situations could have so easily been resolved.

Raw power and ability wasn't enough though, kids just didn't go around performing feats of strength in broad daylight. I would have to work under the cover of night and hide my face, balancing my real life and my secret one would be difficult but not impossible. If I was going to take a crack at this vigilante business I needed a disguise. Nothing fancy, just something I could move in easily and something to hide my identity. Thankfully in my own wardrobe I now had a lot of dark clothing, all my old things had to be replaced with the upgrade because I had become too tall for everything. Even Daisy had chipped in before I left Cerulean, less for me and more because she just loved shopping. Thankfully I was able to sway her away from anything too obnoxious.

I settled on a black sweatshirt, jeans and runners. Figured everything was dark enough for me to blend into the shadows and keep a low profile. As for my face I found a half-gas mask in the storage shed and some goggles. With the hood up no one would be able to tell it was me, at least I hoped they wouldn't.

Feeling like I wouldn't look scary enough on my own during my little excursions I picked up a baseball bat and rigged a strap to hold it to my back. The plan was if anyone got too aggressive I could scare them off with it, I never wanted to actually use it. I figured it would be easy: Swoop in when trouble reared its ugly head, scare off the bad guys and disappear into the shadows. Foolproof, because who in the right mind would willingly mess with a guy in a scary gas mask holding a metal baseball bat for a weapon?

Let's just way that it was not the worlds greatest plan.


	4. Renegades

The Unremarkable Super Zero

Chapter 4: Renegades

That first night was at best a disaster.

Getting to the city was easy enough, I just had to wait for the professor to go to sleep before I snuck out and fetched the bike. Lacking updated plates and an actual riders license for myself I took all backroads, hid the old motorcycle under a thick cover of bushes in the first park I found and took a deserted foot path into the city.

Goggles down, mask on, hood up.

The city looks and feels different when you didn't have a face or a name, my own moniker was the least of my worries. But it was alright, I didn't need a name. I was dressed to blend into the shadows and disappear, I didn't need to leave behind anything. Certainly not a name. I stuck to the alley ways between the main streets keeping my eyes and ears open, Marill and Venonat would have been useful on a nighttime excursion however their safety was more important than aiding me in scoping out potential dangers.

Viridian was usually a very peaceful place, even in the dark of the night with minimal police activity. I honestly wasn't expecting much to happen, maybe a Skitty trapped in a tree or someone who accidentally locked their keys in their car. Not exactly jumping off of buildings or perfuming great feats of strength but I had to start somewhere, also I didn't feel ready enough to confront real aggressors. I knew very little about fighting aside from some defensive moves, and even then I hadn't had a chance to test them out in this new body so I was going out into the world without a proper test run.

CRASH.

I stopped, crouched down and hid behind a trash can. At the end of the damp alley I could hear some voices and a few silhouettes came into view, their arms flailing around as their arguing became louder. It was a dispute about money, apparently one of the men had missed a deadline and made the other two very upset with his 'lack of respect' as I heard it. Considering the two men demanding money were much larger than the other guy I decided to stick around and see if the tinnier one needed any help.

Sure enough one of the larger guys let out a yell and swung his fist at the small guy, his punch missed and the little one darted away from him right in my direction. Still in my hiding spot I pulled my bat from its homemade holster and right as the larger gentlemen were rushing by my trashcan I swung it out and hit one of them in the ankles sending him flying face first into a puddle. The other guy stopped to see if the puddle drinker was alright but his gaze quickly found me, my heart felt like it jumped into my throat and I attempted to clamber clumsily over the trashcan to get myself out of the corner.

Unfortunately for me my foot caught the lid and I toppled face first into a discarded cardboard box full of something rotting, the gas mask did very little to keep the smell out. Before I was able to pull myself up both of the men were advancing on me, puddle drinker was soaked with dirty water but otherwise unharmed. With my bat in hand and my knees clattering together like castanets I tried to negotiate my way out of a beating.

"E-evening gentlemen! Good night to collect on loans I assume?" My voice sounded like a horrible squawk and the men didn't find the greeting very funny, of course not. I'd just slammed one of them into a dirty puddle and ruined his fancy suit. Their massive hands reached out for me but I was able to avoid their grasps by ducking down and skittering between them, neither of them found this very amusing. Wielding the bat in both hands I was not ready to fight back but I didn't have a choice, what hero ran away from a fight?

"Any of you boys baseball fans?" I cracked with a laugh only to be met with a swift hit to the gut. My fault, I was too busy making a joke to pay attention but the fight started going downhill from there. Nope, scratch that. The whole thing went downhill the second I left the lab that night.

The bat was ripped from my hands and and used by puddle drinker to repeatedly hit me across the face, I felt my head turn almost all the way around and something crack. The other guy grasped the front of my shirt and tossed me into the side of a nearby dumpster, in my dizzy state I was still able to detect looks of shock and confusion on their faces when I stood back up again.

"What? Never seen a guy take a punch before?" The bright side was I was in so much pain I wasn't shaking in fear anymore. Sadly my head was throbbing, my body was screaming at me and I really didn't feel like I had it in me to take another hit so quickly but it's not like I could call time out in the middle of getting the snot beaten out of me. So I attempted to hold my self steady and tried to look tough, it didn't work very well.

Puddles knocked the tip of the bat on the ground and snarled. "Bet your face is good and bloody under that stupid mask."

With a snort and an eye roll they couldn't see I peeled the gas mask off and revealed the lower half of my face which would have been swollen and cut up if I had actual skin and muscle. Even my teeth were still in place so I flashed them a grin and laughed. "Oh yeah? You think so? Take a look at this tough guy, I still have all my teeth." The grinning hurt, but it sure made them mad.

"What the hell kind of freak are you?" Puddles stabbed the end of the bat into my chest, I saw his distraction as an opportunity.

Gripping the end of the bat with both hands I ripped it out of his fat mitts and reclaimed it, however my spinning head wasn't making it very easy for me to fight back so when they both advanced on me I was basically helpless. Like a play toy they slammed me on the alley floor, kicked in my sides and with the bat leaving my hands once again slammed me across the face with it. I heard another cracking noise and realized my goggles were destroyed.

I felt one of them lift me up by the hood and tear the last of my disguise off my face, all I could seem to do was weakly thrash about. What the hell happened to all the strength I had? Days before I was able to lift a car and scale trees like they were playground equipment and now these yahoos were using me like a punching bag. With one eye cracked open I saw them starring at me, they seemed horrified and baffled.

"What the heck is this? You're just some snotty teenager!"

The men dropped me and I hit the ground back first knocking the wind out of my lungs, as I was gasping for air I heard them leaving. Possibly because they didn't want to fight someone who was just a kid in their eyes (funny, because I sure thought I looked grown up), or maybe my unscathed face freaked them out. Whatever their reason they made sure to take my bat with them and kicked my gas mask into a pile of trash. When I was finally able to breathe at a more normal rate I reached for my cell phone hidden in my sock and dialled for the last person on the planet I ever hoped to be calling in this situation.

When I was finished with my call I somehow raised myself off the ground and dragged myself to the street where I sat on a bench at a deserted bus stop and waited. The smell of the rot I'd fallen into earlier burned my nose and I felt like I was going to vomit, I still couldn't figure out why these guys were so easily able to thwart me. I sat there trying to look as normal as possible, attempting to keep my stomach contents down and counted the cigarette butts on the sidewalk to distract myself.

I was doing a fairly good job when a blue car pulled up and I couldn't hold it in any longer. As the driver with the wild head of red hair stepped out to greet me I threw up on the street, he disappeared back inside his car for a moment and reappeared with a towel from the back seat. Shaking his head and making a 'tsk tsk' sound as he rounded the front of the vehicle he handed over the towel, I accepted it but not without shooting him and icy glare first.

"Don't tell mom anything." I warned him as I wiped my face off, dinner the second time was horrible.

"Hmmm…don't know if I can make any promises on that." Stacey kneeled down so he was looking me in the eyes and his face went from amusement to genuine concern. "Is…is your neck okay? It looks…broken. Does it hurt?"

He was right, my head was stuck on an angle to the left. I'd tried snapping it back in place before coming out of the alley to wait for him but that only made the pain worse. Thankfully I didn't have a real spine so while I technically had a broken neck the chances of me being in any real danger were slim. "I wouldn't really say broken, just stuck…in a very awkward position. And no, no! I'm fine actually..."

"Stuck? Right, whatever you say cowboy. How did this happen?" Stacey could sense right away that I was lying so there really wasn't any side stepping the truth.

I shrugged the best I could and pounded a balled up fist into my palm. "Might have been two guys and a baseball bat, but it was kinda dark and-"

Blue eyes wide with horror my brother grabbed me by the shoulders. "Tracey! And I thought you were the good sibling, what the hell have you been doing? This isn't normal behaviour for you."

I winced at the pain of Stacey rustling me. "I know that, and I'm not telling you anything else."

"Fine, be secretive but I'm bloody taking you to get that fixed. You can't even move your damned head."

I had to turn my entire upper body to face Stacey as he stood up and tossed the towel into a nearby trashcan. "No, seriously just take me back home to Pallet I'll be fine. It doesn't hurt, really!"

Stacey pointed angrily at me and yelled in frustration. "I'll MAKE it hurt if you don't get any help and you know I'm serious about that."

"Well what do you propose? A hospital won't have any idea what to do with me, are there any mechanics awake?"

"No, but the Facility has a location here."

Oh fantastic. Just what I needed, a bunch of scientists poking and prodding at my head.

"We'll take you in, have them fix you up and THEN I'll take you home."

"Fine, whatever. While I'm getting violated you can pick up a motorbike I ditched in a bush?"

Stacey's mouth hung open in disbelief, he rubbed his temples and breathed a heavy sigh. "…a motorbike? Tracey, what the hell is going on?"

Choosing not to answer I sat there silently, head stuck practically sideways. Vigilantes never reveal their secret identity to the police, which is what my brother was even doing in this city. He'd come here the year before to begin training at the police academy so he was probably conflicted with what to do with me as is. I mean, I'd technically stolen a bike and assaulted a man. Did he really need to know why?

"Alright, be stubborn for once in your life. I'll take you to get fixed and get your darn motorcycle…did you steal it?"

"…if I bring it back it's technically borrowing, right?"

"Yeah…I'm so done with you tonight." Stacey huffed, opened the passenger door. "You get in and don't even talk. You don't want me to get involved, so I won't."

It was early the next day before I was able to make it back to Pallet Town. The people at the Facility had taken their sweet time getting me fixed up, asking me a whole lot of useless questions about how it happened and how I was feeling. Of course I didn't tell the truth, wether they believed me or not they didn't let on. By the time I was written up as "repaired" like a damned car part and released Stacey had returned with a small trailer and the bike in back. I was hoping that if we had made it back in good time I could sneak the bike back into the shed and slip back into the house to sleep for a few hours before the professor noticed I was gone.

Unfortunately for me he was already awake when we returned, before I even had a chance to open the passenger door of the car he was out of the lab and halfway down the hill walking very hurriedly. The closer he came the more I could see an angry expression plastered across his face, he was still in slippers and a house coat. The professor rapped sharply on the window looking extremely impatient, gesturing for me to roll down the window. I did as he wished (albeit hesitantly) an braced myself for the worst.

Exasperated, the professor shook his head. "Just where have you been?"

"Aren't you going to ask why I stole your bike?" I managed to sheepishly respond.

"I will later, frankly I'm a little more worried about the well being of a kid I'm supposed to be looking out for disappearing in the middle of the night without warning!"

Ouch. He was right about that, I guess by then though I'd been away from home for so long I'd forgotten about parental figures looking out for me. If I owed anyone an explanation it was the professor, so after I excused myself from my brother's vehicle I returned the motorbike to the shed. My brother was still waiting in the car when I returned, talking to the professor through the rolled down passenger window. What they were talking about I didn't care, neither of them had any idea what was really going on. Somehow I convinced Stacey to leave, promising I would tell him what was going on after I spoke with the professor.

When all that was left of my brother were tire tracks on the dirt road and the distant sound of a car engine I turned and started scaling the hill without looking up. The Professor followed muttering something under his breath I couldn't quite make out, I wondered what kind of a lecture he was going to give me. Once inside the house I went straight for the living room but didn't sit down, despite being exhausted I was far to anxious to stay in one spot. Apparently so was the Professor, he stood under the doorway and rubbed his eyes before looking up at me with disbelief.

"Well, I guess it's my fault for letting you clean out the shed. Suppose I was just to preoccupied and forgot I had some secrets stashed away in here."

I shrugged in response trying to avoid eye contact. "You know what's funny? My dad idolizes you…really, he does. A whole shelving unit full of Starstruck stuff at least, and I know there's more in the basement. Who knew our heroes would turn out to be the same person?"

I caught a smirk crawl onto the Professor's face. "Oh yes…there was a time when I was rather popular. I think I'm more of a cult favourite now, but what are we going to do about this?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know my secret."

True. After years of being hidden in boxes, under dust and cobwebs a whole other life that was once packed away and meant to be forgotten was seeing the light once again. For what reason it was kept in the dark though I had no idea. But the professor seemed to be implying it was very sensitive information, and I had stupidly invaded his privacy without even thinking through the repercussions.

"Just tell me one thing Tracey, why did you do it? You've been here for quite a while now and I've never know you to just run off like that."

I knew what I wanted to express but finding the words was difficult, so I shifted awkwardly on my feet and focused on a scuff on the wood floor while I tried to make a coherent statement. "Uh, well…I dunno, I was just thinking that maybe it's what I'm supposed to do. I mean, why else am I like this? I don't bleed, I have no bones to break. I figured out that I'm pretty fast and strong, more than a normal human at least. Like I know I'm not the most out-spoken or adventurous person, but It seems wrong to do nothing with what I have."

"And what do you plan on doing exactly?"

I bit my lower lip nervously. My bloodless, muscle and fatless lower lip that was probably nothing more than some kind of fancy silicone. "The same thing as you, I guess…"

The professor let out a heavy sigh and finally took a seat on the couch, he glanced over at me with a weary expression."Tracey, things are different now than they were 30 years ago. The bad guys are more dangerous, and vigilante justice is illegal in most municipalities now."

"All very good points…" I replied swinging my legs over the arm of the couch and taking a perch. "…however I'm 30 years of knowledge and advancements, and frankly I don't care if it's illegal or not. Is that why you quit though?"

"Not exactly…" He shook his head and stared up at the ceiling for a moment, collecting his thoughts and remembering. "They were only just starting through the process of passing that law around here when I made my choice. Honestly it wasn't really much of a choice, I had no other option but to stop. After a decade of late nights spent running around on roof tops and fighting criminals my body was starting to revolt. My joints and muscles ached, I was constantly exhausted. I couldn't physically do it anymore, quite simply my body was old before its time."

"You see, that's why I'm perfect for this. Well, almost. My body isn't going to break down like a strictly organic one, I'm like at least 85% manmade parts and if anything happens to break I can be fixed. Like tonight, I somehow ended up snapping and twisting my neck. Stacey took me to one of the Facility locations and they fixed me in a few hours. I admit it though, I didn't perform as well as I thought I would tonight. I think I was too scared and it totally threw me off…" There was no way I was telling him exactly how I got banged up, how could I? He was _the Starstruck_. A genuine superhero. Why would he even want to hear about how much I screwed up? It was stupid, I wasn't prepared and went out anyways. That was about a smart as a bag of hammers trying to float.

"Of course you were scared, it's not really a normal thing to go out looking for trouble. You have no experience with these kinds of things."

"Not totally true, I've gone up against Team Rocket at least a dozen times now." I protested. They may not have been the most formidable foes to go up against, however they always had a talent for appearing at the most inconvenient moments with the most bizarre schemes.

"Yes, but you were on your own this time."

I left my monsters outside at night so unless he went looking for them after I left how could he possibly be so certain that I have left them behind? The professor saw the confusion plastered across my face and let out a small laugh.

"You would never be stupid enough to bring your Pokemon into that kind of a situation. And you're right to leave them behind, they should only be used as a last resort and never put in the way of danger. Looking for trouble is different than purely self defence or an official battle. There's no rules when you're out there. People can be hurt, killed even. The same goes for pokemon. When you put on the mask you hold the lives of others in your hands."

That statement was enough to make me slink down into the cushions. "That…that's pretty heavy."

"It's the truth! Going out there isn't a game."

Once again I scramble off the couch with about as much grace as a psyduck, tripping over my own feet in the process. "I know, I know! Look, I'm serious when I say I want to do this. But I understand that you're the veteran even if times have changed, even if I'm not exactly the best candidate. Professor, I want to do this because I'm probably going to end up living for a very long time like this and I don't want to waste it. I was frightened when I found out what I was and I still kind of am so I want to make something good out of all of this. I'm literally replaceable and I want my life to be worth something."

The professor stared hard at me for a moment like he was looking for a reason to call me a fool, the silence made me tense. His expression did finally break into something softer and he rose from the couch to meet me holding his hand out. "Well, at least you sound sincere…How about you and I make a deal?"

"What kind of a deal?" I skeptically took a step back, cautious of the handshake.

"If I can provide you with the resources and the training to help you in this endeavour you have to promise me that you won't start any real vigilante duties before you meet my approval. That means you have to be in top physical condition, you have to be mentally fit and truly understand what your actions will do."

"And how exactly do you plan on helping me out?"

"I have a close friend who once assisted me, I'm sure he'll be more than eager to do so again."

"…so, no joke. You'll help me out?"

"Absolutely."

Wanting to avoid seeming overly eager I hesitated a moment before shaking his hand and sealing the deal. "Well, you are the expert. As usual."

"You have to promise me something then."

I looked to him expectantly, wondering if I was going to be getting all of this in writing.

The professor made sure to look me directly in the eyes, he placed his other hand directly on top of the ones locked in the handshake. "Never say you're replaceable ever again. You can switch out and replace that body all you want, but it's nothing without a soul. Without your essence that body is just an empty shell. Do you understand?"

Needless to say the entire exchange left me with a lot to mull over.


End file.
